Saving Wyatt
by Victoria Hughes
Summary: Chapter 2 up! Chris never expected the sisters to be so . . . annoying. A different take on Christopher Perry's troubles as the whitelighter of the Charmed Ones, in which Chris isn't perfect and Leo isn't evil; hate is such a strong word, after all.
1. back to the past

_There are a lot of fanfics out there that make Christopher Perry Halliwell out to be a weepy wisp of a man who heart bleeds because of his lies; a boy abused, a son forgotten, et cetera et cetera. Okay, I'm sure it wasn't easy (even if the way time works in this universe makes absolutely no sense to me), but I doubt Chris himself would make out his whole life to be a tragedy or his current situation something to cry about. Thus I present to you: season six from Chris' point of view._

_The word 'neurotic' does not appear anywhere in this fanfic. If that's not a first, I don't know what is._

**Saving Wyatt**

&

"Ready for this?"

Christopher Halliwell snorted. "Ready? You really think anyone can be ready for this?" He scowled at the trifecta scrawled on the wall before turning his glare on his fiancée.

But Bianca just smirked at him. "Good."

And that was the last words they exchanged for two weeks.

&

"_We all know this is hopeless."_

_Chris leveled a glare at the dissenter; the witch waved a hand, scowling back. "You know full well we aren't going to make any progress here. We don't have enough resources or enough people, and you—" He stopped speaking abruptly._

"_I'm what?" Chris growled. The other witch would say nothing, however. He threw up his hands. "Fine, whatever! Don't trust me! It doesn't make any damned—"_

"_Chris, Darren, both of you ease up," snapped a third witch, stepping between them physically with her hands up. She glanced at the two before lowering her arms. "I think it's time to revisit the time travel thing."_

"_No way. We could make it all _worse_," Darren snapped, but the female witch spoke over him._

"_Chris, Darren is right about our cause being hopeless. We're on our last legs here. You know, I know it, and in all likelihood Wyatt knows it. I know we all agreed it should be our last resort, but … I think it's time for our last resort."_

_Chris ran a hand through his hair. "You know what I said then, too: I won't let anyone else do it. It has to be me."_

"_I know," she said in a low voice, but Darren threw up his hands and turned away._

"_He'll never kill his brother! Nothing is going to get fixed if we send him!"_

_Chris' face may as well have been made of stone as he said, "Watch me."_

&

The truth was, he was the best candidate for a lot of reasons. One, he was a Halliwell, and that really counted for reasons one through one hundred to send _him_ back as opposed to anyone else. It made him a powerful witch – nothing like his brother, of course, but very little could hold a candle to Wyatt's power. It meant he could handle the Book of Shadows, which possessed the most acute time travel spell known to magic. He knew the Charmed Sisters better than anyone else alive (besides Wyatt).

Two, he was half-whitelighter; as powerful as the Charmed Ones were, they didn't often consort with other witches. It gave him a good cover.

The final reason counted to no one but himself, as, after all, he had not told the small group that knew of the plan his actual intentions. _I am probably the last person on earth that loves Wyatt, _he thought. _And I'm going to save him._

&

Loving Wyatt came naturally, helplessly, _frustratingly._ Liking him was a whole different matter. Chris hadn't _liked _Wyatt much since he was thirteen and the really _nasty _pranks started, like stripping him of his powers without him knowing and then daring him to fight an ogre. He'd said 'I hate you' maybe a hundred times to his brother's face, and Wyatt usually laughed at him because the words were impotent. "You don't mean that," Wyatt would say in a mocking tone, or "I love you too, brother."

And killing him? Chris had honestly tried _once, _and only once; thinking of the crime that caused the incident made him sick, and then sick again when he thought of the aftermath. Then again, Wyatt had honestly _tried _to kill Chris _never_, and it was disgusting the only reason he knew this was because he wasn't dead. It was maybe love or at least a twisted kind of mercy. Maybe sadism, but Chris didn't think so. Indulgence, perhaps.

Someone told him, "No one was meant to have that much power," and Chris had snarled that wasn't true, because it wasn't, or Wyatt wouldn't.

The problem was that it _didn't _make sense, but only because Wyatt was evil. That kind of power might have made sense in someone good – someone who wouldn't abuse it. So, Chris wondered, why was his brother a twisted madman? This kind of thing didn't happen on accident, or out of the great blue yonder.

The question of why ate at him. He spent several months obsessively chronicling all the vanquishes of the Charmed Ones between Wyatt's birth and his fifth birthday, although whatever had happened to him probably happened before Chris had been born, but that told him little to nothing about Wyatt's experiences. He almost wanted to go back in time just to sate his own curiosity.

Of course, there was also the other thing.

&

The Charmed Ones had fallen on Chris' fourteenth birthday. Piper Halliwell, the eldest living sister, had died in the family room of a broken neck, witnessed by her second son and second sister.

Most people prayed to go quickly when they did, but a Halliwell prayed that death came slowly enough to let Leo or Wyatt come to their rescue first.

The family had never been the same after that; Chris knew _he _had certainly changed. Aunt Phoebe never really forgave herself for not killing the warlock before he killed Piper (and it was a warlock, just a simple warlock, nobody special – just lucky). Chris couldn't say he felt any different, and fell into a depression he never quite climbed back out of. Aunt Paige went on a magic binge again which meant that Chris did a lot of babysitting, even though it should have been Wyatt doing the babysitting, but Wyatt was angry – _furious_ – and frightening. Leo, not knowing what to do with either of his sons now that Piper was gone, may as well have disappeared off the face of the planet. Grandpa Victor had no reaction; he was already dead of cancer, two years then.

That was, in Chris' opinion, the real beginning of the end. He might have thought it was the trigger that caused Wyatt to go power-hungry and nuts, but he knew first-hand how Wyatt had been even before that.

For Chris, the end was when Wyatt killed their cousin Melinda, their last living relative. Conquering the world was just the epilogue.

&

Intellectually Chris knew his mother was not infallible. He also knew that Paige could be obsessive and Phoebe could get worked up over nothing, but applying adult reasoning to what he saw as a child only had limited impact. In his memory, Piper was always cooking something or giving a loving scold to him or his brother, or sometimes her sisters; Paige was always doling out money and helping her nephews and nieces pull pranks; Phoebe was smiling and giving love life advice.

Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder. (Now if only that were true of Leo.)

Chris Halliwell practiced saying his mother's first name under his breath and tried to remind himself that not only did the Charmed Ones he was about to meet not know he was their nephew or son, but they were also younger, had less wisdom, and less responsibility. They had lived through disaster, but not on a worldwide scale and not for an extended period of time. They were soft and had time to be soft.

They probably would not love him, but as long as they trusted him that was okay. He looked at the few pictures he had of them before he was born and got used to their younger faces. He tried not to lie to himself: okay, yeah, he was really excited about getting to hang out with his aunts again and see his mother again, so long dead in his own time. But he couldn't let himself get overwhelmed by it. He had to be professional and distant. He had a job to do.

When he stepped through the portal, he knew he wasn't ready, but he didn't know how not-ready he was.

&

Chris liked making plans. Plans made him feel like he had some firm ground beneath his feet; they gave him parameters in which to work.

This was Chris' plan for when he went to the past:

1) Get them through the Titan disaster more efficiently, thus gaining the Charmed Ones' trust. Become their whitelighter if at all possible.

This had limited success. The first time, according to the story as told by Aunt Phoebe, Aunt Paige had spent two weeks as a statue. The Titans had nearly wiped out the Elders, but in the end someone Up There had released the power of the Greek Gods and turned Leo, Mom, and Aunt Phoebe into gods. Here the story got kind of muddled, probably because Aunt Phoebe was embarrassed about something, but in the end, as gods, they managed to defeat the Titans. Aunt Paige had been unhappy about missing out on the whole turning into gods thing.

Chris' version of the same thing went a little differently. First he got Aunt Paige un-immortalized within hours instead of weeks. Then he got Leo to save a bunch of the Elders and turn all the sisters into Gods, which – in a little unexpected blessing – got Leo turned into an Elder early, opening up the 'whitelighter for the Charmed Ones' position. It also got him in good with the Elders when they heard Chris was the one that put Leo up to the whole thing and he got the job he'd desired easily.

Then Mom went and rendered most of this work moot by destroying the Titans in one fell swoop and refusing to stop being a god because she was mad at Leo for abandoning her and Wyatt.

Awesome.

It was only a taste of what the whole thing was going to be like, he realized while the wind howled and the rain beat down from his mother's fury. His aunts, his mother – they were all … _annoying._ They couldn't keep focus – and being a god was _not _a good enough excuse. They were far too dependent on Leo; Chris didn't remember them needing Leo so much when he was a kid. They let their emotions rule them, even knowing it could result in disasters like the one his mother was causing at that exact instant.

He probably should have felt bad about Piper's current mental state: after all, he was indirectly responsible. But the truth was he couldn't sympathize with making a tempest over _Leo _of all people.

_How, _he wondered, _did my mom and aunts get _anything _freaking done around here?_

And Aunt Phoebe had come within an inch of _flirting _with him. _Seriously, gross!_ Granted, it wasn't her fault, but _still!_

He told them he had come from the future to save Wyatt. It was not a lie, but nor was it the truth. Unfortunately, he doubted the sisters three could handle the whole truth, and he sincerely hoped he wouldn't have to find out if they could. They bought it and welcomed him with uncertain looks, and Chris figured it was the best he could hope for.

The good news, he decided, came in three: one, once his family got focused things happened, and fast. Two, he hadn't done anything stupid to give himself away or accidentally reveal much of anything about the future. And three, hearing his mother say, "I'll handle this!" in the exact same tone she would use ten years in the future? The sweetest sound to ever hit his ears.

2) Get Leo out of the picture entirely.

This was an unexpected addition to the list that quickly shot to the top when Leo informed Chris that he didn't trust him (nothing new there!) and would be watching him closely (that was different). Being watched closely by _anyone _would be a bad thing, since he wasn't exactly the kind of whitelighter Leo probably had in mind for the Charmed Ones.

Chris wondered distantly how Leo's shocked face would look if he ever found out the truth and got a good chuckle or two out of it. (If he was completely honest with himself, he might have noted that he was a little bit selfishly motivated too; he did not like Leo. It was just funny that this past Leo didn't like him either.) But he hastily made arrangements with the Valkyries for his safekeeping, and all it took on his part was a well-placed telekinetic shove.

That lasted for about a month.

3) Establish an information network and start eliminating all threats to Wyatt.

In that month he established roughly twelve demonic contacts by befriending or intimidation and got the Charmed Ones started on vanquishing the long list of demons that would come after either them or Wyatt.

His mother also slowly went insane.

Chris remembered his mom as a nice person; her temper had kind of faded into a footnote in his memory. Nonetheless even he couldn't deny that she was far too … happy … that month, especially for someone who had tried to drown San Francisco with her grief over Leo. Aunt Paige made a spell that backfired and erased her memory entirely; Phoebe amplified the whole problem when she gained her empathy powers (which caught Chris off-guard; he'd not expected her to come into those powers until after he was born). Then the sisters decided to go to Valhalla in search of Leo and when the whole mess finally ended, Chris realized Step Two had backfired on him so spectacularly he was surprised he didn't have whiplash.

That's what he got for being selfish.

4) Undo all the damage done by Step Two.

By this time he was tenuously established in the back room of P3's office. He slept on the couch (which was too short for him and he was really getting sick of waking up with cramped calves), decimated Piper's office coffee supply, and took showers at the local YMCA.

Staying out of his aunts' and mother's hair as much as possible while still keeping them on track seemed like the wisest course. Leo was even more suspicious of him now, certain that Chris had sent him to Valhalla; Chris denied it vehemently and when he left, he shoved shaking hands in his pockets. The trust the sisters had given him was tenuous, and when Leo found proof – and he would, since, after all, Chris _had _done it – that would be gone, and he didn't know what to do.

Wyatt was no help.

Okay, Wyatt wasn't even a year old. At first he'd thought that would be the weirdest thing about traveling into the past, but in the end he'd thought about it so much that seeing baby Wyatt in person for the first time was barely a footnote to his first day in the past. He was a very quiet baby with the beginnings of curly golden locks of hair and didn't even have full motor control over his body – yet he threw up his shield at the very first sight of Chris for that whole first month.

"You dick," Chris told him. "As if _I'm_ the threat." But baby Wyatt merely stared at him with big blue eyes. "I'm trying to save you! Can't you cut me a break?" Wyatt waved his arms and Chris flinched back – even as a baby there was a lot he could do with those arms – but nothing happened.

"I really do hate you, you know," Chris mumbled.

Wyatt yawned.

Privately Chris could admit Wyatt was right to fear him, and even more privately Chris was relieved the shield kept him at bay. On his darker days he would clutch an athame and consider how it would look with baby Wyatt's blood on it, and wonder if the world wouldn't be better off.

&

Chris had known about the shield before he came. Everyone knew about the shield. Wyatt was so overpowered that he rarely needed it in the future; he had the full range of whitelighter powers, including healing, orbing, and sensing others' locations, and a host of witch powers: pyrokinesis, telekinetic orbing, freezing, combustion, conjuring, projection, animation, and even limited precognition. Excalibur enhanced these powers and added levitation and traditional telekinesis to the bunch.

He had demonstrated nearly all of those powers before the age of two, and he never had any trouble using them. The only stories about magical mishaps with Wyatt were those of the havoc he wreaked before he knew better – never magical backfire. He was the Twice-Blessed; magic stopped the day he was born; he was the next King Arthur.

Chris could orb and sense the location of his charges and family – when he'd had either – and he was a powerful telekinetic like his Aunt Prudence. The ability to orb, or orb other things, he'd had since birth. The telekinesis he hadn't demonstrated until he was nearly five years old. The most remarkable thing that could be said about his birth was that he'd nearly killed Piper when she hemorrhaged during her C-section.

And his mother had wondered why Chris had an inferiority complex.

&

The one place Chris had never felt inferior to his brother was at his grandpa's apartment. Grandpa treated them equally no matter what and he was always fun. He seemed to know all the best places to hang out with kids.

Grandpa Victor lived in the same apartment he would occupy in a few years, when Chris and Wyatt would start being dropped off at his house to be babysat on a regular basis. Feeling a little stalker-ish, Chris lingered outside a window one evening and watched his Grandpa come home from work; he whistled to himself, throwing his keys into the same cup holder he would keep them on in the future, and put down a bag of groceries on the counter in the kitchenette. He looked almost exactly as he would ten years later, just before the diagnosis that would end in his death.

Chris drafted an anonymous letter warning Victor that he would die of mouth cancer if he kept smoking, but in the end he set it aflame. He watched the fire eat the paper in under a minute, thinking _future consequences future consequences _over and over again.

Besides, if the cigars didn't kill Grandpa, burying his remaining daughters surely would. It was just selfish to want him around for a couple more years.

&

Most of the time being distant from the sisters was surprisingly easy. It was great to see them alive again, yes, but in light of what Chris had shown up to accomplish he found them so exasperating that he rarely found himself feeling confused or even all that nostalgic. (It helped a little that he was taller than them all now; he hadn't hit his final growth spurt until after they had all died.) It was the little things they did – the way Paige not-yet-Aunt-Paige would flip her hair, or when Phoebe came into a room breathless with excitement and her hands balled up at her sides, or when Piper rolled her eyes skyward and said 'yes' in that long drawn-out way that said 'but I'm about to object' – that would throw him for a loop.

It was hardest to be detached around Piper, but it still wasn't that hard.

He remembered his mom lamenting that she couldn't have a normal life because of magic. He didn't remember Aunt Phoebe or Aunt Paige complaining of the same problem, but here, in the past, they were all determined to 'not let magic take over their lives'. Chris could do nothing to impress his urgency upon them; they visibly resented him for constantly demanding that they vanquish demons he had found.

"_Look, would you pick up the pace?" _he would imagine saying. _"Your precious kid there is going to turn into an evil dictator on the level of Hitler and you can't be bothered to cancel a spa appointment!?_" But he couldn't bring himself to say it. For one thing, they would never believe him and the trust that continued to hang by a thread would be shattered. For another, when – or if – they realized the truth, he really didn't want to see their expressions. Differentiating between the past and the future was easy most of the time, but that didn't mean he wanted to see their hurt, depressed faces.

And he did what he could on his own – not to spare them, at least not entirely, but to spare _himself _the struggle of getting the sisters organized and on the job. Nobody was supposed to know about his telekinesis, so he used it sparingly and to great effect, always keeping his eyes open for Leo, who was starting to resemble a stalker with all the sneaking around following him everywhere.

"Don't you have something better to do?" he demanded when he caught Leo standing outside the McDonald's he had just bought a cheeseburger from.

"My first job is keeping the sisters and my son safe," Leo said in reply, leveling an even, piercing look at Chris.

Chris had to hand it to him; Leo could pull off that 'peering into the soul' angel stare pretty well. He scowled in response. "Yeah, well, that's my job. You gave it to me, remember? Don't you have Elder stuff to do?"

"It can wait." Leo didn't move.

Chris took a big bite of his cheeseburger and stared at Leo over the wrapper, eating with his mouth open on purpose out of petty obnoxiousness. "Well, I hope watching me eat a burger and go to bed satisfies your voyeuristic tendencies. Don't blame me if the Elders get all huffy about you neglecting your duty."

Leo said nothing. Neither of them needed to; the rest of the conversation may as well have been rehearsed. _If you harm the sisters or Wyatt in any way …_

_Oh blow it up your butt, Leo. I'm here to save Wyatt, how many times do I have to say it?_

_I'm watching you._

_Yeah, I noticed. Hard not to._

If Leo ever found proof that Chris had sent him to Valhalla, he never presented it to the Elders or the sisters. Chris counted his blessings and tried not to wonder why.

&

Leo hadn't been a bad father; he just wasn't around much. In the original past he became an Elder after Chris was born and that had put him Up There rather than Down Here a lot more. Chris didn't often try to be objective about Leo, and it seemed to him that when Leo was around he spent more time with Wyatt than himself; on the occasions that he _did _try to be objective, he had to be fair and admit that Leo's extra time with Wyatt was halfway due to Wyatt being a troublemaker, especially as he hit his teens. Not that Chris didn't get into his own fair share of trouble, too: nonetheless, it was hard to like a man that was rarely around to do more than mete out discipline.

He made it to firsts – the first play, the first spelling bee, the first graduation, the first sports game. The problem was Wyatt, being older, got all the 'firsts'. Chris … got a lot of apology letters. He made a poor joke in his mother's hearing about Leo having a form letter in his files: _I'm sorry I didn't make it to your (blank), but I was swamped with work. I'm sure (blank) went well!_ Mom's face had gone flat and hard and she left the room, and later that night there was an argument between her and Leo, but nothing changed.

While he and Piper had separated not long after Chris had been born, Piper's death had been the end of any attempts for a relationship between father and sons. Leo's appearances were only for the direst of emergencies after that, and even then he was too late more often than not.

Aunt Phoebe had been sure, even into her last months, that Chris resented Leo for not saving Piper's life. Chris wasn't stupid; Mom had died instantly when her neck hit the coffee table, and very little could heal death. Besides, Wyatt had been the closer one with the healing power. No; Chris did not resent his father for not saving his mother.

He hated Leo for not saving anyone else afterwards, including himself.

&

Chris was grateful to Leo for exactly one thing, and that was introducing him to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. The view was magnificent, the wind was refreshing, and there was nothing quite like seeing the San Francisco skyline intact and under a brilliant sun to remind him of the kind of future the world could have once again.

Leo liked it up there too, and sometimes they crossed paths, even when Leo wasn't following him around. Weirdly, they could actually share that space without animosity.

Chris had to admit it was kind of nice.

&

Actually, the hardest thing about trying to use the Charmed Ones to save Wyatt from turning evil was their tendency to react in the most bizarre ways to pressure. Like trying to direct water from a nozzle on full blast with a thumb, they tended to fly unpredictably in any number of directions. Sometimes they blew him off; sometimes they acted suspicious. Occasionally one of them would be abruptly gung-ho about whatever mission he was throwing their way. In the midst of a situation they were as likely to get depressed and want to give up as rally themselves and fight back. Any battle plan they came up usually fell apart within minutes, or failed due to unforeseen circumstances, leaving them vanquishing evil while flying by the seat of their pants.

Exasperation didn't begin to cover what Chris felt around them.

"You know, usually we just let the demons come to us instead of going to them," Phoebe told Chris once while throwing on her jacket to go to work. "It's worked out okay."

"That's my point. It _doesn't _work out okay," Chris pointed out, gesturing, but Phoebe was already on the way out the door.

"Let me know if you need me! But, uh, try not to need me between noon and two, because we have a staff meeting at the paper, okay?" She called as she jogged down the steps.

It was a really good thing that Chris didn't have the power to blow things up. The door would have been toast.

&

Since traveling through time, especially to the past, was a massive taboo, there wasn't a lot of research done on the effects of meddling with past events. While Chris felt fairly certain that nothing he did could make the future much worse than it already was, he didn't know what the sum total would be, or what ongoing effects would occur. Would his memories be altered as the future changed, or would everything fall into place when he returned to his own time? Or would he return to the future unchanged and know nothing about it? How would he know if his memories had changed? Would erasing the trigger event that sent Wyatt down the path of evil just be like throwing a switch, making the future as he knew it an obsolete alternate timeline? What would happen to _him_, then?

Actually, that question was beginning to press on him anyway. Leo had become an Elder early and therefore his parents had _split_ early, and what kind of paradox would it be if he had come back from the future but he _wasn't born?_ Bleak though his own time was, Chris was rather attached to living and wanted to continue doing so. But trying to get his own parents back together just so Leo could father him made him kind of nauseous. He put the matter aside for later, writing down notes about what had been done and what still needed doing, his handwriting jumpy because of too much coffee and not enough sleep.

Then Bianca showed up, and everything nearly went to absolute shit.

&

Bianca was an assassin. Wyatt enlisted her to seduce Chris and turn him against the Resistance, to Wyatt's side – not that Wyatt thought he _had _a side. "Good and evil, that's bullshit," Wyatt would say. "All that matters is being powerful."

Chris had flung his arms out, nearly speechless with rage and horror at his brother's latest atrocity: six witches dead so that Wyatt's warlocks could steal their powers. "This, this--! You see this? This is _evil_," he had gasped.

Wyatt had looked at Chris, cool as ice and shaking his head. "I wish you'd let go of the whole good versus evil notion. It's starting to get on my nerves."

"Maybe I'd shut up if you'd _listen,_" Chris had snapped.

"Maybe you'd shut up if you were dead," Wyatt answered, and smiled. "That's a joke, you know."

"Hah hah," Chris deadpanned, crossing his arms to hide his shaking limbs.

If there was no 'good' or 'evil', there was certainly 'Wyatt's side' or 'not Wyatt's side'. And Bianca – well. If anything had ever backfired on Wyatt, it was certainly Bianca.

Chris had never in his wildest dreams thought he would go the path of Aunt Phoebe and fall in love with a demon, but he had. And Bianca had gone the way of the fabled Cole Turner, loving him in return; rather than turning Chris to Wyatt, Chris had turned Bianca against him. She stayed on Wyatt's payroll and reported fake successes or failures, and they both waited in terror for the day Wyatt figured it all out. But if he had he said nothing about it. Until Chris returned – presuming he couldn't hit the mark and return only minutes after leaving in the first place – Bianca was supposed to be covering his ass, pretending Chris had just orbed to the far reaches of the Earth for some peace and distance.

Chris didn't seriously consider the implications until months later, but apparently he had been absent from the future for two weeks when Bianca appeared, stripped his powers, and dragged him back to the time from whence he came. She had little choice in the matter, of course, and given the consequences of her disobedience (death), Chris knew he had to come; it offered no comfort, though. His hard work over the months had not yet yielded any results, and any chance for future progress was probably about to be eliminated.

Wyatt had scared the younger Halliwell brother before. When they were little Wyatt would tell scary stories which gave them both the kind of shivers that made them share a bed that night. Later the scares got more serious and less funny – they started as pranks, then escalated to bullying, and ended in murder. In the months before crossing time to the past, Chris felt he had little to personally fear from his brother, who had never tried to kill him despite jokes (threats) that he would, but he feared for everyone else's lives.

That day, standing in front of his older brother, admitting his crime slowly (I'm trying to save you) and stripped of his active powers, he had no idea how he would survive.

It was his parents and aunts that saved him, issuing help from the past with a brilliant maneuver that restored his powers in time to escape, the time spell in his grasp.

He was not fast enough, however, to save Bianca.

&

The sisters were surprisingly sympathetic to the grief that followed – Phoebe especially, perhaps because she'd had to vanquish her husband once before (twice before, actually, according to Aunt Paige, although one of those times had been in an alternate timeline). Piper left him cookies at the club – not that she admitted it, but the 'leftovers' she kept at the office smelled like nostalgia and weirdly enough were the one thing that brought Chris closest to an emotional breakdown over everything.

He shed a few tears for Bianca. He granted himself a week long vacation from the sisters, the longest he figured he could afford.

He spent a lot of it underground killing demons.

On the seventh day he orbed to the Manor and into Wyatt's room, a Power of Three vanquish on his mind. Wyatt, down for his nap, didn't wake up.

"You're not going to get a chance to kill my fiancée," Chris informed him flatly. "That's never going to happen. I'll stop you from turning evil if it's the last thing I do."

Wyatt kept dreaming, and Chris never spoke so prophetically again.

_Tbc_

_Let me know what you think! Thank you for any and all reviews!_


	2. saving himself

**part 2 (saving himself)**

&

The footnote of the whole time-traveling fiasco was the sisters discovering – quite on accident – that Chris was not just a whitelighter, but also a witch. Chris probably should have minded more than he did, but he was grieving and frustrated and increasingly tired. He forgot about it entirely until Paige brought it up again: "So, what's your powers?"

Chris scowled at her and Paige rolled her eyes. "You know, your witch powers. You're half-whitelighter, half-witch, like me, right?"

"Right," Chris said, answering shortly because he really didn't want to be having this conversation.

"So?"

"So …?" Chris echoed, purposely being obtuse.

"So what's your power?" Paige looked exasperated by this point.

"Telekinesis, not that it matters, and can we please get back to making a potion for the Praxor demon?"

"Wow. Like – orbing telekinesis, or like Prue telekinesis?" Chris glared at her, and Paige huffed. "Just asking. What, you think telling us your powers falls under 'future consequences'?" Paige asked, making quotes in the air and deepening her voice to mock Chris'.

"You weren't even supposed to know that I'm part witch," Chris pointed out, putting down a bottle of thyme with a little too much force.

"Well, we do now, so what's it gonna hurt?" Paige asked, shrugging dramatically. "Oh, wait a minute, do you know your parents? I mean, did the Elders lighten up on the whole witch-whitelighter thing because of me entirely, or—"

"Hey, I have an idea. How about we finish making this potion sometime today?" Chris snapped.

"Paige! How's that potion coming?" Piper shouted from Wyatt's bedroom.

"It's coming just fine!" Paige shouted back. When she turned back to Chris, though, he was gone.

&

While 'vacationing', Chris vanquished thirty-eight demons. He also fell into depression. There was no end to the parade of demons that could turn Wyatt, and even if he stopped one event from occurring, how could he hope to stop all of them? Just because he stopped the event in the original timeline didn't mean something else couldn't come along and undo all his hard work.

There was one surefire way to protect Wyatt from all demonic threats, and he almost thought the sisters would go for it: binding Wyatt's powers. They all whined about magic ruling their life and Wyatt was just one long magical problem, right? Binding his powers would cut their demonic problems by half at least!

It was just his luck, then, that he caught them on an upswing in their relationship with magic. Piper didn't want to bind Wyatt's powers because she didn't want Wyatt to grow up like she had, not knowing her magical heritage. Paige, of course, agreed – she loved magic – and Phoebe trusted her sisters over Chris.

He wasn't above manipulation, however, and he almost – _almost! – _got them to agree by messing with Paige's magical 'perfect man' gift for Piper's birthday, but in the end his plans blew up in his face and the whole thing almost ended in worse disaster when Wyatt was kidnapped under their noses.

Chris had read about the demons that did it, and remembered a very truncated version of the story of the Order, a group of demons that used a magical device to turn Wyatt towards evil. Even in the original timeline they had saved Wyatt before Wyatt was physically kidnapped; Chris cursed himself violently for getting distracted for even a moment. It ended up being a very, very close rescue.

The good news was, the rescue was easy because Wyatt _didn't _trust Chris; when it was over, Wyatt stopped raising his shield upon sighting his future younger brother.

The bad news was, Chris, stuck between a rock and a hard place, found himself confessing the truth about the future to the sisters: Wyatt was evil and had to be stopped.

He wasn't particularly surprised when they kicked him out the front door on his ass.

&

Trust wasn't supposed to be an easy thing: in the Halliwell family, trust was only granted to members of the family and a few select people outside it. Exposure was a constant risk, one that the sisters took very seriously; everyone in the family knew how Aunt Prue had died. Even in the magical community most people had an angle when they wanted to befriend the Charmed Ones or the Twice Blessed or the extended family, and often things were not what they seemed (with the number of concealment spells Chris knew, even as a child, he was well aware there had to be many more).

Thus 'Christopher Perry' was proud of what little trust he _had _managed to establish with his future aunts and mother, despite Leo and despite the Elders and despite everything else working against him.

The irony was murder: when he finally came clean, they assumed he was lying. A surprise? No. But Chris was not ashamed to admit he was offended. _They already think he's a golden child and all he's done is wave his arms around and make a few magical messes!_ It was hard to not resent them – and Wyatt – for it all.

&

Chris' mother was a pessimist. She rarely dared to look on the bright side of things; on the occasions she _did _brighten up, it was usually just in time for disaster to strike. In all honesty Chris had largely forgotten about this, since she was always telling her sons to look for the positive.

He vaguely remembered Wyatt calling her on it: "Mom, you're always saying the _worst_ things are gonna happen …"

"Do as I say, not as I do," Mom had replied, flinging a finger in the air and turning on her heel to get the chicken out of the oven.

"But you _are_ saying it," Wyatt protested.

"Wyatt!" Piper had barked, and Wyatt had ducked his head and grinned.

So for Piper's birthday he left a mug that said 'This glass is always half-empty (even when it's full)' on her desk at P3. He didn't leave a card and he wondered which sister Piper would blame for the present. He also wondered if she would get angry or think it was funny. Probably both, he decided.

Chris figured he'd gotten his pessimism from his mother. Leo, for all his flaws, wasn't a downbeat person. Besides, it was easier to expect the worst when the worst was all you got.

Or maybe he was just a realist. Getting kicked out of the Charmed Ones' lives put a severe bump in the road, but as he lay in the dark on the too-short couch in P3's office, he decided all was not lost. In the end the sisters would decide they couldn't risk the possibility that Chris was telling the truth; they would invite him back, cautiously, unhappily, but they would need him to guide them to saving their son/nephew. It was the wait that would kill him.

It killed him more to admit that Leo's advice was good: "Don't manipulate them, even for a good cause." Perhaps he had only delayed the inevitable by not telling them the truth right away. Maybe knowing the truth from the beginning would have been the kind of motivation the Charmed Ones needed to keep up the pace.

That didn't mean he was going to tell them his biggest secret, especially now.

&

Piper didn't kick Chris out of P3, and Chris did his best to not be anywhere near the club when Piper was around. He occasionally orbed into the house to take a look at the Book of Shadows and took care not to be seen by the sisters. A growing list of demons that could only be eliminated by the Power of Three sat in his back pocket. However, another problem began to gnaw at him constantly, driving him to distraction.

He had to be conceived soon, or the biggest time paradox in the history of magic was about to occur. But Leo and Piper showed no signs of interest in each other, and they certainly weren't having sex. What Chris could do about it he didn't know, but he had to do something. His uncle, Aunt Phoebe's husband, would have told him to trust in the Grand Design to make sure he was born. Chris was pretty sure he had fucked the Grand Design sideways by being responsible for the very event that would prevent his own conception. He spent sleepless nights writing up recipes for love potions and scheming ways to slip it to his parents, only to throw out his work in the morning.

Off and on he wished he could get Phoebe's advice: she was an advice columnist and she helped strangers all the time. Why couldn't she help her own sister!? But asking Phoebe about getting Piper and Leo back together introduced so many complications he could barely count the variables. One, how would he get on Phoebe's good side enough to ask her? He was still in the metaphorical doghouse for telling the truth about Wyatt. And even if he did, Phoebe would want to know why he was asking. Chris hadn't made much effort to hide his animosity towards Leo, after all, so why would he want Piper and Leo to hook up again? If Phoebe figured out he was actually Piper and Leo's second son, then it would only be a matter of days before the rest of the family found out; she couldn't keep a secret to save her life.

When the aunt in question visited him in his little room in P3, she asked him The Question point-blank: "Are you Wyatt's little brother?"

A wave of terror and a wave of relief crashed over him simultaneously.

"Only if I can get Piper and Leo back together in time," he heard himself say, and relief carried the day as he thought _Aunt Phoebe will know what to do. She always knows what to do when it's about couples._

Then she hugged him, and for a second Chris forgot everything and just felt happy.

&

He should have seen it coming; after all, Phoebe's power was that of premonition, and so she was the natural sister to discover Chris' identity. Nonetheless he had counted on Phoebe's inability to have premonitions from years in the future (except in a few isolated instances). Her powers must have expanded; Aunt Phoebe could have a premonition regarding just about anything she wanted to in the future, after all.

She tried to help Wyatt with his own precognition, but the power based in the moon phases was not an easy one to control and Wyatt made a poor student. It was the only power he hadn't mastered immediately, and so he never truly mastered it, unable to be bothered to struggle with one power when so many came naturally to him.

Chris made fun of Wyatt when he got visions as a kid, which Wyatt took in good fun until he turned fourteen and thought Chris was annoying. He faked visions as often as he actually got them, anyway, just to get a reaction out of their mom or Aunt Phoebe: once he picked up a coffee mug in the kitchen and suddenly jerked his shoulders, gasping. Mom nearly dropped the orange juice she was holding. "What is it?"

Wyatt opened his eyes. "I saw … you drinking coffee from this coffee cup!"

Chris had laughed: he was ten and easily amused. Their mother snatched the coffee cup from her son's hands. "Very funny," she said in that sarcastic tone she loved. Wyatt snickered.

But Aunt Phoebe insisted that Wyatt could get premonitions about anything he wanted to if he learned how. Wyatt shrugged. "What if I don't wanna know?"

"But your visions could save innocents," Phoebe pointed out. "You got this power for a reason, Wyatt."

"Right," Wyatt said, but he didn't seem very enthusiastic.

"_I'd_ find out about the future all the time," Chris had put in, headstrong and ready to grab any attention he could. "Then I'd save _everybody_."

Aunt Phoebe had smiled at him. "That's so sweet!" She tried to pinch Chris' cheek, but he leaned away, making a face, and her smile died a little. "But you can't save everybody, honey."

&

But reality returned like a brick to the head.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Phoebe asked, sitting on the couch Chris slept on with her elbows resting on her knees.

Chris paced the room; it was nine steps from one end to the other. He glanced at Phoebe before glaring at the far wall. "Would you have believed me?" he shot back, his pent-up frustration over the last few weeks coming out in a flow he couldn't stop.

"Of cour—well … okay, I don't know," Phoebe admitted, but she rushed to continue, "But it doesn't matter! This changes everything—"

"It doesn't change _anything_," Chris pointed out. "What does it change? Does this mean you believe me now just because I'm family? That's great," he barked, throwing his hands up. "But if I'm not _born_ then it's not exactly like we'll have ever had this conversation."

"Yeah, see, that's just weird," Phoebe complained, rubbing her forehead. "How did you say this happened again?"

Chris sighed and flopped onto the other end of the couch, resting his head back and looking at the ceiling. He was intimately familiar with this ceiling now. There were thirty-two cracks in it. "It's my fault. I've created a time paradox. This is exactly why time travel isn't allowed."

"Well, you know, it's not like there's not some time for Piper and Leo to cool down, get their bearings, maybe get back together …" Phoebe temporized.

"Is that all the advice you can offer? Hope for the best?" Chris groaned. _I'm not being fair, _he thought. _No wonder nobody wants to help me. When they finally do wanna help me all I do is snap at them._

"Honey, you can't force love," was all Phoebe said, perhaps used to these exasperated outbursts.

"But they don't have to be in love. They just have to, you know … do it." It was weird to say it out loud for the first time.

"Chris, I cannot believe you," Phoebe laughed – actually laughed! Chris lifted his head to stare at her. "Piper is not just a baby incubator!"

Chris buried his head in his hands, his stomach twisted in knots – disgusted with himself for thinking of his mom that way, and so anxious he couldn't help but continue to think that way, his mental detachment of Piper-the-Mom from Piper-of-2004 finally hitting him in the gut. "I know," he grumbled. "It's just that—"

"It's okay," Phoebe said, still smiling, and Chris startled when she reached out to rub his back; he almost flinched away. "Don't worry, Chris, I'm sure you'll be born, on time and everything."

It didn't mean much, but Chris couldn't deny it felt good to hear it anyway.

&

Like a ball rolling down a snow-covered hill, the problem seemed to get larger and bear down on Chris like a freight train. He put everything about Wyatt on hold: after all, if he wasn't conceived Wyatt wasn't going to be saved. Phoebe insisted that everything would fall into place, but Chris wasn't convinced: this mess was of his own making. Magic, if it was self-correcting, was more likely to just erase him from all timelines then let him be born. (Pessimism, he knew, but trying for optimism wasn't part of his to-do list.)

And that was another thing to worry about: what if all this effort was for nothing? What if Wyatt was destined to become evil? In his waking hours it was easy (easier) for Chris to believe he could succeed, but in his nightmares Wyatt killed people and clapped Chris on the shoulder like it was just good sport. With every month he spent in the past Chris felt his chances slipping away; what was supposed to be a surgical strike was now a hopelessly long struggle with no visible fruit. Anyone would have been frustrated with the situation.

Then the genie mess happened.

&

The grossest part about coming back in time without telling anyone he was Piper's son was that as a result both his aunts and his mother felt free to discuss their love lives in front of him. This included sex lives. Phoebe was the most likely to get graphic, although Paige was known to be the same, and they both liked to egg on Piper into talking about her exploits as she looked for a new love interest now that she and Leo had broken things off. It took a fair amount of willpower to not clap his hands over his ears and shout "Ew, gross!" like a spoiled six-year-old, or make faces. Most of the time he just left; unfortunately he caught them in the middle of such conversations all too often when he actually needed the Power of Three, and the sisters were not overly inclined to drop their conversations until they were done. He limited himself to snide comments like "I so didn't need to hear that," or, "Hey, dude in the room!" Although for obvious reasons, this hadn't been a problem for a little while now: he still wasn't precisely welcome in the Manor with Paige or Piper, even if Phoebe had forgiven him on account of him being her future nephew.

(Sometimes, when he listened to them bitch and whine about this or that problem, he wanted to tell them about their futures just to get them to shut up. _Paige, you're not going to marry Richard, so just dump him on his ass and let it go. Phoebe, your boy toy boss can't stand magic and he's going to leave you over it when he finds out the truth. Piper, you're my mom. Stop dicking around with the fireman, get back together with Leo, and have me!_

Then he would take a deep breath and let the fantasy go with regret.)

He definitely knew a lot more about his mother's personal life than he ever wanted to know. On the other hand, he had an obligation to know, since if his mom didn't hurry up and screw Leo then he wasn't exactly going to be around to be disgusted by said personal information. Right now his mom was all over some fireman named Greg who looked like he was way too young for Chris' tastes: he couldn't have been much more than twenty-eight. Granted, it wasn't like Piper was a whole lot older than him but he wasn't a whole lot older than Chris, either, and that grossed him out.

In any case, the genie thing happened. Chris could honestly say he didn't remember hearing anything about the genie thing. Genies were bad news but he really thought he was probably safe to take advantage of Phoebe when his future aunt was forced into the role, but the sneak took him literally when he wished for his parents to sleep together and no sex occurred. Damn it.

Leo, still hung up on the Valhalla thing no doubt (which, in retrospect, was one of the biggest reasons his parents had separated and the whole thing hadn't even helped Chris out all that much: he really should have wished the whole Valhalla adventure could be forgotten), had apparently been arguing to have Chris forced back to the future. Chris' accidental wish that Leo would 'get over his issues' with Chris was probably the best thing he'd ever accidentally done in his life, at least as far as his chances of saving Wyatt went. On the other hand reconciliatory Leo was possibly the weirdest thing ever and Chris continued to try to avoid him.

But the worst part of the whole thing was actually Aunt Paige finding out The Big Truth About Chris: if Aunt Phoebe couldn't keep a secret, Aunt Paige couldn't be subtle. At all. Ever. And now Paige, always about solving every problem on her doorstep, was on the case and Chris was definitely _never going to be born._

He should have had more faith in his aunts, really – but the truth was, he didn't want his parents to have even a whiff of the chance they were conceiving the whitelighter that spent a good third of his time forcing demon hunts on them. With his luck, Leo would refuse to have sex until Chris' conception date passed (well, okay, maybe before the whole Genie Thing, but still). And Piper, well. Chris didn't want to know what Piper's reaction would be. It would be shock, disgust, denial, or possibly horror – if he knew the present-day Piper – and she wouldn't mean anything by any of them because it would really be about the idea of Leo getting her pregnant, but he just … didn't want to know. It was a little hard to not take things like that personally when it was about your own conception, after all.

But in the end, he could do nothing but accept their help. (Paige at least owed it to him after all the times she'd left him behind with some kind of temp-job mess.)

He consulted tarot cards, a demonic soothsayer, and a fortune teller – they all told him the same thing: his conception date was the day after Wyatt's first birthday, no later, maybe earlier.

Aunt Phoebe tried abandoning Piper and Leo to each other as often as possible. Paige laid it on a little thicker with aphrodisiacs and questions about wanting another kid. Chris suggested love potions and got shot down.

Conception day arrived and Leo and Piper were no closer to doing anything, and Chris started to fade away.

&

His Uncle Coop would often say 'everything happens for a reason' and 'trust in the Grand Design'. Chris liked the idea that everything in life had a purpose, but Wyatt scoffed at it because according to him, a Grand Design meant everything was destined and he wanted to have power over his own destiny. Wyatt was only okay with the idea of destiny when it came to his own prophesied future: a great, powerful King Arthur of his generation.

Grandpa would say 'do your best and everything will turn out right' and 'FDR was right about only fearing fear itself'. Chris ate that up, too. Wyatt didn't like to think he was afraid of anything and everything he touched turned to gold, so he liked Grandpa's sayings too.

Chris gave up on Grandpa's sayings when his Mom died, but he didn't give up on Coop's, even if he hated the 'Grand Design' for taking his mother away. Wyatt, who had never believed in the Grand Design to begin with, lost any semblance of purpose he might have had – or perhaps he simply pursued a different purpose. In any case, it was obvious that he no longer felt any compunction against doing whatever he wanted to, and he was powerful enough to get away with it.

Chris didn't give up on the Grand Design until he saw Wyatt holding Excalibur and leading the Underworld in the grand takeover of San Francisco, because if there was a purpose in everything, well – obviously evil was destined to win, and Chris couldn't live with that.

&

What happened on Chris' conception day almost made him a believer again.

For one thing, Chris got conceived. He had done nothing – neither had Piper's sisters – and yet somehow, he was conceived anyway, while Leo and Piper were in mortal danger and on a different plane of existence, and god Chris really didn't want to think about the details of that one – he was just grateful he was going to be born.

Two, if he hadn't almost faded out of existence – if he hadn't faded out to the ghostly plane and been able to communicate with Piper and Leo – then his parents might have never found a way out of limbo. _That _was a little too convenient to be a coincidence.

"See, I told you so," Phoebe snickered, smirking at him with the same 'I-knew-it-all-along' look she would give him ten years in the future.

"Yeah, yeah," Chris answered when he'd recovered from his relief and exuberance. When Leo and Piper made it safely back home, he quickly backed off and let the sisters comfort them both in their own way.

He slept well that night. _Problem one solved, _he thought. _Problem two … I'm ready to tackle again._

&

What he was not ready to tackle was his mother.

Chris had been able to impress upon Phoebe and Paige the importance of his parents _not _knowing he was their son, but the only reason they submitted was because Phoebe reasoned that neither of them would be able to perform in bed if they knew what kind of task they were facing (starting the life of the boy that would save their other boy). Now that the deed was done and Chris was obviously going to be born, come hell or high water or demons or whatever the heck else, neither of them seemed to see a reason to hold back and Chris could give no satisfactory reason for continuing to hide his identity.

"Future—" he started, but Paige groaned over him.

"If you say that phrase _one more time, _I'm going to orb your voice box to Florida," she snapped.

"Now let the grownups figure out how to break the news gently," Phoebe said with another infuriatingly knowing smile.

"I'm only like six years younger than you," Chris pointed out irritably. "And I'm legal to drink."

"Nine months from now you're going to be twenty-eight years younger than me," Phoebe pointed out amicably.

Chris threw up his hands in defeat. _Okay, Leo, no wonder you stayed the hell away. The women in this family are impossible!_

&

Leo remained true to form, however; immediately following the whole mess, he left – left for good, in theory, staying with the Elders like he was supposed to be doing back before the whole Valhalla fiasco turned everything on its head. Chris felt equal parts relief, anger, and guilt – after all, his mom was pregnant now and Leo should have been around, but he rather preferred that Leo not be around and it vindicated his dislike for his father.

He wondered how Piper was reacting to Leo's departure, but he couldn't look her in the eye at the moment.

&

When she knew, Chris knew.

He hadn't really caught the whole conversation – but the tail end, enough to know what kind of family talk Phoebe and Paige had engaged Piper in. It was less than 24 hours after his conception and they were telling her already – honestly, no one in this family could keep a secret to save their lives. (Okay, except maybe himself, but that was by luck – certainly not skill, given how quickly the truth had spread once it got out.)

For the first time since his arrival Chris felt nervous as he rounded the corner to come upon the Halliwells of the past, and when Piper – Mom – looked up at him, he _knew_ and she _knew_ and. And.

"Is this a bad time?" he asked, trying to keep his voice neutral (trying to pretend nothing had changed), but she just _looked_ at him, and—

_Mom baking Mom cooking Mom yelling and hugging and laughing and saying his name and vanquishing demons and making potions and going to the mall and taking him to sports games and listening to him bitch about his classes and—_

Fuck. This was exactly why he didn't want anyone to know.

_Tbc_

_Next part is supposedly the last part, but we'll see. Thank you for the reviews!_


End file.
